Ron English‘s oil paintings have long entertained, bewildered, and challenged viewers in each’s absorbing strangeness. In a new show at Corey Helford Gallery, titled “TOYBOX: America in the Visuals,” the artist offers his latest body of work. The pop art legend’s show starts Dec. 2 and runs through Dec. 30. The new collection deploys “the artist’s long established visual vocabulary into multi-layered narratives of ambition and imagination.” English was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
“‘TOYBOX’ deconstructs the search for new meaning in a culture that is based as much on the imagination of its participants as on the physical realities these human concepts are played against,” the gallery says. “The toy based childhood imagination aesthetic of the work allows for a playful new look at a society in the throes of reinventing itself.”
The works featured here include 36 new oil paintings, sculptures, and installation are that carries this through. See a few of these pieces below.
Spanish artist Ivana Flores crafts pop-surrealist oil paintings with both a childlike sense of whimsy and ominous undertones. At grand sizes, the works carry an absorbing quality that pulls you into her worlds. Her work has been described as “reality, dream, everyday life and imagination merge at a turning point of boundless consciousness of self-image and world.”
Beijing based artist DU Kun incorporates his passion for rock music into his new oil painting series titled "Revels of the Rock Gods". His works, which just debuted at Mizuma Gallery in Tokyo, Japan, are monumental portraits of rock musicians that appear carved out of mountains, cliffs, oceans, stones, trees and waterfalls. His first profession while he was in art school was as a rock musician himself, and has since frequently demonstrated his musical prowess. The artist began working on his "Gods of Rock Festival" series in 2014, creating the works out of his own experience with rock music.
There’s a wild energy to 
The expressive oil paintings of Russian born and Philadelphia based artist